As in all post-Communist countries, the danger
of national and ethnic conflicts in the Czech Republic and Slovakia is
becoming increasingly evident. An state of uncertainty has arisen--a state
of nervousness, of indefinitude, of insubstatiality--in which old rules
are no longer valid, everything is changing, and the new rules do not yet
exist.
The Roma (also known in English as "Gypsies") form the second largest
minority group in Slovakia. In 1991, the Roma of former Czechoslovakia
obtained the right to freely proclaim themselves as members of a distinct
minority in the census. In Slovakia, 80,627 Roma (1.52% of the citizens
of Slovakia), officially declared themselves as such. According to estimates
of the urban and communal offices of the state administration from 1989,
however, as many as 253,943 Roma live in Slovakia, thus constituting 4.8%
of the population. Since these statistics did not include Roma who have
a standard of living comparable to that of the majority population, Roma
political and cultural activists estimate that the number of Roma in Slovakia
is even higher, citing a figure of 350,000 to 400,000 in Slovakia.
The Romany population tends to suffer disproportionately from higher
rates of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, crime and disease. When discussing
"the Roma problem", most references focus on the part of the Romany population
living in very poor rural and urban conditions. The number of Roma living
in unbearable conditions in rural communities and devastated central city
zones is agglomerating and represents a potentially very serious societal,
social and economic problem. Roma often live 2-3 kilometers outside of
a village in camps of settlements with only a few dirty houses without
facilities, in cellars, or in cardboard or wooden shacks. Some of the camps,
such as the one near Rudnany in Eastern Slovakia, were built on dumping
grounds or other areas containing materials such as mercury and arsenic.
In order to understand the present situation of
the Roma in Slovakia, the problem must be considered historically. Early
in this century, the Roma in Slovakia, as elsewhere in Europe, formed an
ethnic community, living on the social periphery of the mainstream population.
State policy nearly always focussed on the Romany population not as a distinct
ethnic minority, but rather perceived it as a particularly anti-social
and criminal group. This attitude was reflected in the policy of collecting
special police evidence--fingerprint collections of members of Romany groups
(1925), a law about wandering Roma (1927), and so on. During the Second
World War, approximately 6 to 7 thousand Roma from Bohemia and Moravia
died in a special concentration camp at Auschwitz. The Slovak State also
copied the racist legislation of the German Reich, establishing special
labor camps for the Roma, who were forbidden to travel with public transport,
were allowed admission to towns and communities only on limited days and
hours, had their settlement units separated from public roads, and so on.
After the occupation of Slovakia by the German army, mass killings of Roma
occurred in many places.
After World War II, the policy of the state was oriented toward one
of assimilation of the Roma--in 1958, Law No. 74, "On the permanent settlement
of nomadic and semi-nomadic people", forcibly limited the movement of that
part of the Roma (perhaps 5%-10%) who still travelled on a regular basis.
In the same year, the highest organ of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
passed a resolution, the aim of which was to be "the final assimilation
of the Gypsy population". The so-called "Gypsy question" was reduced to
a "problem of a socially-backward section of the population". The solution
to
the high number of children in Roma families took the form of financial
incentives for Roma women to undergo sterilization. State arrangements
were also oriented to solving the problem of housing by the liquidation
of backward Romany settlements and resettlement of the Roma to urban settings.
Although Romany cultural and ethnic identity was denied, organs of the
state administration in communities and towns gave annual accounts of "the
Gypsy population". This evidence was collected without the knowledge of
the Roma, who were categorized according to the criteria of the social
services. Similarly, when there was a census, people were not able to proclaim
their Romany ethnic identity, but census officers nevertheless marked the
forms without the respondents' knowledge to indicate that they were in
fact Roma.
In April 1991, the demand for the equalization of the Roma with the
other ethnic minorities in Slovakia was accepted by the Government of the
Slovak Republic. The Declaration of Basic Human Rights and Freedoms accepted
by the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia on January 9, 1991, also secured
the Roma's right to freely decide their own ethnic affiliation. Individual
ministries were developing initiatives for the Romany minority, securing
their rights in the fields of culture and education.
The disintegration of Czechoslovakia has created
new problems for the Romany minority in both newly-formed countries. Since
1992, Czech society has been increasingly apprehensive about mass migration
of Roma from Slovakia to the Czech Republic. This fear persists despite
a sociological study completed in Summer 1992, which found that no concentrated
migrations to the Czech part of the country had appeared until that time
among the Slovak Roma.
In both the Czech Republic and Slovakia, responses of local authorities
to increasing crime and social unrest have led to the passing of local
regulations and decrees which embody a peculiar kind of discrimination
against minorities. These regulations have disproportionately affected
Roma. After the dissolution of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, some
of its residents automatically acquired Slovak citizenship, even though
they were born in the Czech Republic, had been living there for a long
time, and had their places of permanent residence there (a condition accorded
importance by the law). By this legal act they became aliens in their current
homes and would have to apply for Czech citizenship if they wished. The
procedures required were particularly difficult for the Roma, who were
handicapped most seriously by the condition that citizenship could be obtained
only by a person without a record of criminial activity in the previous
five years. This five-year limit is equal to the requirements in other
countries for refugees who have never had citizenship rights there. It
was not so difficult to acquire Slovak citizenship: everyone who had a
permanent residence in the Slovak Republic before dissolution of the Czech
and Slovak Federal Republic became a Slovak citizen.
Another example of these decrees was the so-called Jirkov Decree of
December 3, 1992, which empowered that municipality to dislocate persons
from their residences without a judicial order or other legal action or
court decision primarily because of violations of norms and regulations
for hygiene. This would surely have facilitated and simplified the process
of getting rid of "unadaptables", predominantly the Roma. Jirkov's representatives
were asked for the text of their decree by their colleagues from several
other northern Czech towns (e.g. Ustí on Laba, Chomutov, Most, etc.).
These events inspired the proposal of an extraordinary anti-immigration
bill in the Czech Parliament, which in many aspects went further than the
local decree of Jirkov; e.g. it instructed citizens to contact a registration
office if they wished to accommodate in their flats persons without permanent
residences of their own, while police officers and other qualified persons
would have been entitled to enter homes and inspect them. Ultimately, the
bill was not passed in the Czech Parliament, but had been discussed; this
fact alone clearly expresses the negative attitude toward the Roma. The
Romany Civic Initiative lodged a protest, but this did not prevent the
occurrence of several instances in which Roma citizens were forced by police
officers to relocate to Slovakia with their families.
A similar tendency has developed among local state organs in Slovakia
as well. In Spisské Podhradie, a small town in Eastern Slovakia
with a high concentration of Roma, the Mayor signed a decree in July 1993
which explicitly denied the Roma and other "suspicious" persons of certain
basic rights. Allegedly an attempt to reduce Romany criminality, this decree
was contradicted not only the Slovak Constitution but also international
civil rights standards. Although the National Council condemned and abolished
the decree the next week, before it could go into effect (two weeks were
necessary), comparable measures were taken by the government: the police
presence in Spisské Podhradie was increased. Many other mayors had
agreed with the original decree and had wished to use it, had it not been
found unconstitutional.
Similarly, on August 7, 1993, in a televised interview, the mayor of
the town of Kezmarok stated that city police would be empowered to require
Roma to show identification documents at any time in any place. He was
asked, "What measures would be used, hypothetically, if someone's documents
were not in conformity with the law?" He answered, "for example, permission
[would be granted the police] to detain suspected Roma criminals for 2-3
days for examination; if the Roma were given welfare, they should do some
work for public purposes, etc.".
The affair was also complicated by an implicitly anti-Roma statement
made by former Slovak Prime Minister Meciar at a meeting with local representatives
in Spisské Podhradie in early September. He talked about socially
unadaptable persons, but everybody knew he meant the Roma. Indeed, there
is general anti-Roma sentiment among Slovak officials at all levels. The
mass media carry a similar bias and suggest few specific solutions except
reinforcing the police presence in these regions. Ironically, an all-powerful
police was also a primary tool of the previous totalitarian regime.
It is apparent that in general people in Slovakia,
even those elected as local representatives, are not aware of their human
and civic rights. They do not understand what measures are acceptable,
what are appropriate attitudes, or what kinds of behavior lead to racial
prejudice.
Ideally, the problems of the Roma and other minorities should be solved
on regional and community levels. It is essential to create mechanisms
for constant consultation between communities' leaderships and minority
representatives and organizations. Solutions to the problems of a region's
minorities must be integrated with that region's overall development. Ideally,
the central government should create effective administrative and judicial
mechanisms to remedy discriminatory acts against Roma and other minorities.
Furthermore, it should provide services to the regions to help them more
comprehensively integrate the development of Roma and other minority communities.
Without a more decentralized approach to regional development (e.g. a better-functioning
banking system to provide loans, more local authority in real rather than
formal terms), even the most well-intentioned local governments will be
unable to seriously address these problems.